"It has been the misfortune of this age, that everything is to be discussed, as if the constitution of our country were to be always a subject rather of altercation than enjoyment." - Edmund Burke anticipates the Neverendum

Thursday, June 16, 2005

Tory boys on education

Here EU Serf sticks the boot into teachers. I've dealt with the myth of choice in education before and won't repeat myself - but I do think the Tories' attitude to teachers illustrates very neatly the state they're in. Teachers tend to be of a conservative disposition, for reasons that should be obvious - yet few of them translate this into support for the Tories and from EU Serf's post, it's not difficult to see why; their contempt for teachers and anything provided by the state is clear for all to see. Take this line, for example:

"Curricula are over prescriptive, teachers are paid the same whatever their skill..."

Can't disagree about curricula - but who do they think introduced the National Curriculum? The bloody Tories, that's who. Is the second bit a plea for payment by results? Ok, so - let's hear the fair way in which the input of each individual teacher can be disaggregated from all the other educational influences in the pupils' lives. And once you've done that, explain why you think having a load of teachers who are motivated by money and willing to let their struggling comrades fall by the wayside is a good thing. Then once you've done that, explain what possible motivation anyone would have for taking on board the more difficult classes in the more difficult schools. Then there's this:

"If teachers are right about their low pay..."

My English comrades are. Why do you think the average length of time a maths teacher lasts at the chalk-face in London is one year? They get fed up with doing a difficult job with little pay and wise-ass commentators telling them what a crap job they're doing. Who wants to put up with that shit?

"competition would certainly make them better off."

Really? How?

"Schools that were run by their headmasters would focus on education not on box ticking, so teachers would be free to do the thing they joined the profession to do. Teach."

Even if schools were run by their headteachers, staff would still have a mountain of bureaucracy to wade through - courtesy of...you guessed it: the Tories!

"The only real losers I can see in such a system are the Teachers Unions and The kind of people who found their jobs in the Guardian. To which one can only say:

That’s a terrible shame isn’t it. :)"

I said before teachers are of a conservative disposition yet don't support the Tories and this is why: the Tories hate teachers, their unions and the public sector in general.